button to main menu  Observations on Picturesque Beauty, page 82

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vol.1 p.82
[enor]mous size disqualifying them for objects at hand. In the removed part of a picture therefore, the mountain properly appears; where it's immensity, reduced by distance, can be taken in by the eye; and it's monstrous features, losing their deformity, assume a softness which naturally belongs not to them.
I would not however be understood to mean, that a mountain is proper only to close an extended view. It may take it's station in a second, or third distance with equal propriety. And even on a fore-ground, a rugged corner of it's base may be introduced; tho it's upper regions aspire far beyond the limits of any picture.
Having thus premised the station, which a mountain properly occupies in landscape, we shall now examine the mountain itself; in which, four things particularly strike us - it's line - the objects, which adorn it's surface - it's tints - and it's light and shade.
  mountain, shape
The beauty of a distant mountain in a great measure, depends on the line it traces along
the
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